Citrus shipping from Titusville, 1885 through the 1894-95 freeze

Titusville became the shipping point for Indian River citrus in 1885, when the railroad from Enterprise reached the town. Fruit from groves down the lagoon came north by steamboat to the railroad’s wharf at the foot of Broad Street and left by train. The City of Titusville’s marker says the terminal “greatly expanded the export of Indian River citrus, pineapples, and seafood.” The trade ran that way until Flagler’s railway came down the coast in 1893, and the Great Freeze of 1894-95 wiped out the crop less than two years later.

Before the railroad

Getting fruit out of the Indian River country was the problem before 1885. The National Park Service’s history of Titusville describes the routes: steamboats up the St. Johns to Sanford, then either a smaller steamer to a landing called Salt Lake and overland to Titusville, or the 42-mile wagon road from Enterprise. Henry Titus had shipped freight into Sand Point by boat and wagon and filled the same wagons with citrus and pineapples for the trip north, but the overland leg limited what the groves could send.

The wharf years, 1885 to 1893

The railroad changed that. The Atlantic Coast, St. Johns and Indian River Railroad began the spur from Enterprise in 1885, and the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West, which leased it, finished the track. The tracks ran down Broad Street and out onto a dock about 1,500 feet into the lagoon. The railroad set up the Indian River Steamboat Company to carry passengers south, and the steamboats timed their runs to the trains.

The Park Service form says the railroad “allowed the rapid entry of tourists and permanent settlers, while facilitating the shipment of products from the region, particularly fish and fruit, to markets to the north,” and that ice plants, packing houses and canneries grew up around the trade. With the only rail connection in the area, Titusville was the transportation hub of the Indian River region.

Two pieces of the trade’s infrastructure date from those years. In the late 1880s Thomas Nevins arrived and started what became the Nevins Fruit Company, formally organized in 1898, which the Park Service calls one of the oldest continuously operated citrus businesses in the Indian River area; the Parrish family later bought it. And in April 1891 the town switched on an Edison electric lighting system, which led to the town’s first commercial ice plant, the Crystal Ice Company, run by W.T. Whetmore. The form calls ice “essential to the preservation of fish products, fruits, and vegetables that formed the backbone of the Indian River economy.”

1893: the transfer ends

Flagler’s railway began service to Titusville in January 1893 and kept going south, reaching Eau Gallie in May. The rails now ran down the river past the groves themselves. The Broad Street marker describes it as the end of “Titusville’s short-lived monopoly.”

The freeze

Then the cold came. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s investigator, Herbert J. Webber, recorded two freezes. The first peaked on December 29, 1894, when Titusville fell to 18°F. The National Park Service form says growers along the Indian River lost virtually all fruit still on the trees, though tree damage was relatively slight, and that the railroads and shippers suffered even more than the growers: hundreds of cars and boats sat idle for lack of fruit, and thousands of men who bought, sold and hauled it were out of work.

The second freeze came on February 7 to 9, 1895, after weeks of warm weather had pushed the trees into new growth. Titusville recorded 19° on February 8. Webber wrote that “the oldest and youngest trees, whether sweet or sour, were alike killed to the ground throughout the greater part of the State.” The Park Service form says trees in north Florida were nearly all killed and those in the Indian River region “substantially damaged.” Our freeze page has the rest of that winter.

After

The groves came back, and the freeze pushed the industry toward the Indian River. With north Florida’s commercial citrus destroyed, the Park Service form says, many growers moved to the Indian River, and by 1900 Brevard had become one of Florida’s leading citrus counties, with much of the production and processing centered around Titusville.

Further Reading

• A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
• Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron by Edward N. Akin